After a long wait, it look like Attorney General Eric Holder is finally going to jail. We The People must push harder than ever to make sure action is taken!

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We are at a tipping point, Sign This Petition and we WILL throw this scumbag in jail!

Longtime Federal Attorney: Eric Holder Protects Corrupt Prosecutors

Four US Attorneys found to have suppressed evidence have been promoted; AG consolidates power

By Sidney Powell | 06/19/14 9:58am

 

Attorney General Eric Holder has systematically consolidated the power and authority of the Department of Justice, opposing calls for reform. (Getty Images)

As Attorney General Eric Holder prepares to enter the penultimate year of his tenure leading the Department of Justice, the time to honor his sweeping promise to “clean up” the Department of Justice is rapidly diminishing. For many, the time can’t pass quickly enough—and be sure he will stay until the bitter end. Awaiting his departure from the Department is a subpoena from Congress that he would no longer be able to avoid.

Not only has Mr. Holder failed to make any of the reforms he promised in the wake of his forced dismissal of the indictment against former Senator Ted Stevens, the changes he has made have been for the worse. Absent a dramatic about-face, Holder will leave the Department of Justice littered with corrupted prosecutions and prosecutors, his own contempt of Congress, numerous Supreme Court reversals, and scathing rebukes from federal judges.

Instead of seeking justice, as he is constitutionally and ethically required to do, Holder has politicized the Department beyond recognition. Instead of enforcing the rule of law and following legal precedent, he has ignored and twisted the law to suit his president.

We now have confirmation that Mr. Holder is protecting and retaining prosecutors whose intentional or reckless prosecutorial misconduct has been confirmed. Indeed, he has refused repeated demands to release the names of the law-breaking prosecutors or identify the cases their misconduct infected. No one is holding Holder accountable.

Rightly called Obama’s Enforcer, Eric Holder sets the tone and makes the decisions for the Department. Aside from his own contempt of Congress, the “Fast and Furious” debacle, illegally seizing reporters’ phone records, Mr. Holder is deliberately protecting prosecutors who have violated the law, the constitution, fundamental principles of fairness, and longstanding rules of ethics in hundreds of criminal prosecutions.

A recent report from the non-partisan, non-profit Project on Government Oversight reveals more than 400 instances of intentional or reckless misconduct by Justice Department prosecutors in the last decade. A significant number of those have been confirmed by the Department itself during Mr. Holder’s tenure. Those must be especially egregious. Inquiring minds would certainly like to know.

Six prosecutors were implicated in the corrupt persecution that unseated Senator Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the United States Senate and a highly-decorated World War II veteran. United States District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan lambasted the misconduct of the Department’s “Public Integrity Section” lawyers in the Stevens prosecution, saying “In nearly 25 years on the bench, I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case.” By the time Judge Sullivan uncovered the flagrant misconduct, he was livid.

Only when it became clear that Judge Sullivan was going to dismiss the indictment himself did Attorney General Holder swoop in to deflect Judge Sullivan’s ire. A golden political opportunity fell in his lap. The savvy Holder manipulated this outrageous prosecutorial misconduct to his political advantage. After all, this administration has lived by the creed: “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” and the unjust conviction had already given the Democrats the 60th seat they had targeted.

Attorney General Holder, a Democrat, announced that he was dismissing the indictment against the former Republican Senator “in the interest of justice.” General Holder received bipartisan acclamations, and the press loved it when he vowed to “clean up” the Justice Department. He proclaimed that he wanted all such prosecutorial misconduct brought to his attention. This was “not the way” the Department would conduct business.

Many of us were buoyed by hope and his promises. We didn’t realize the significance of the timing of his announcement—April 1, 2009 (April Fools).

At the dismissal hearing on April 7, 2009, Judge Sullivan applauded Mr. Holder’s decision, but wisely, didn’t buy the Holder Annunciation. Judge Sullivan publicly excoriated the Department at length. Unprecedented but frighteningly justified, Judge Sullivan appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Stevens’ prosecutors and the Department. The Department was stunned. Holder promised to reform it.

Mr. Holder was compelled to dismiss the Stevens indictment because, among other violations, the Department had concealed the horrible record of its key witness, including his involvement in sex-trafficking of minors and subornation of perjury. That same witness had testified in two previous prosecutions of politicians in Alaska.

Despite the public flogging and the Stevens’ dismissal, Mr. Holder refused even to request a new trial in the Kott and Kohring cases. Mr. Holder’s minions argued that the same evidence withheld in those prosecutions was not “material” to the defense, their trials were just, and their convictions were fair.

On September 26, 2010, one of the young Public Integrity Section prosecutors then under investigation himself for misconduct and for hiding evidence favorable to Senator Stevens’ defense, committed suicide. Again the press exploded with stories about the corrupted prosecution of the former Senator who had recently died in a plane crash in Alaska.

The Alaska district judge in the Kott and Kohring cases was as unimpressed by Judge Sullivan’s actions and admonitions as was Attorney General Holder. But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals slammed him with reversals in both cases. Ninth Circuit Judge Betty Fletcher wrote separately to express her outrage. She urged outright dismissal of the indictment against Kohring because the “prosecution’s refusal to accept responsibility for its conduct is deeply troubling and indicates that a stronger remedy is necessary to impress upon it the reprehensible nature of its acts and omissions.” She did the same in Kott—vehemently objecting to the Department’s failure “to fully grasp the egregiousness of its misconduct as well as the importance of its constitutionally imposed discovery obligations.” She said a “mere reversal” was “insufficient to deter future illegality.” Sadly, it turns out she was right.

On March 15, 2012, the report of the special investigation ordered by Judge Sullivan was released. Henry Schuelke and his partner William Shields uncovered the “systematic and intentional concealment” of exculpatory or “Brady” evidence— that is, evidence favorable to a criminal defendant and deemed by the Supreme Court as constitutionally required to be given to the defense before trial. The requirement is fundamental to a fair trial and a cornerstone of our democracy.

After all, a prosecutor represents all the citizens. As Alex Kozinski explains in the foreword to my new book Licensed to Lie, the prosecutor has unlimited resources of the Sovereign and controls the investigation. The Supreme Court and prior Attorneys General of great integrity have made plain that a prosecutor’s job is to seek Justice—not convictions. They understood that “with great power comes great responsibility.”

Shocked by the Schuelke Report, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial appropriately named “The Department of Injustice.” The Journal called for “severe sanctions” against the Stevens’ prosecutors. Simultaneously with the issuance of the Report, the non-partisan Constitution Project issued a Call for Discovery Reform. Approximately 200 former federal prosecutors and judges (including this author) signed a letter that was delivered to Congress, supporting Senate Bill 2197—the Fairness in Disclosure of Evidence Act, introduced by Senator Lisa Murkowski and a bi-partisan collection of five co-sponsors. Every major organization of attorneys across the country publicly supported the proposed legislation, including the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the United States Chamber of Commerce and many others

The only opposition to the legislation came from prosecutors and the Department of Justice.

 

Kathryn Ruemmler, pictured during the prosecution of Enron executives. Ms. Ruemmler was discovered to have failed to share evidence that she herself considered “key” to the defendants’ case; soon after, she became Counsel to President Obama. (Getty Images)

Meanwhile, back in Texas, I was working as defense counsel for the Merrill Lynch executives being dragged through a second round of criminal prosecution initiated by the Task Force prosecutors that destroyed Arthur Andersen. Unaware of Mr. Holder’s opposition to the new legislation, we were buoyed by the Attorney General’s pronouncements, and the widespread and repeated calls for reform. I represented Merrill exec Jim Brown, and I was certain the prosecutors were hiding evidence. None of the prosecution made any sense—from the indictment forward. No witnesses, including Merrill counsel, would talk with any of the defense lawyers because the prosecutors kept them under threat of indictment.

By then, three teams of Department of Justice lawyers had claimed there was no exculpatory evidence in the government’s huge files from which the original defense trial lawyers had been given only a few page summary by original prosecutors Kathryn Ruemmler, Matthew Friedrich,  John Hemann, and Task Force Director Andrew Weissmann.

On top of that, this second prosecution was on the same indictment the Fifth Circuit had already found “fatally flawed” when it reversed 12 of 14 counts of convictions and acquitted one defendant entirely. Four Merrill Lynchers who the federal district judge had noted were “just doing their jobs” had  spent up to a year in prison because they had been denied bail pending their appeals—until the Fifth Circuit held that their conduct was not criminal as charged.

Countless lawyers across the country (including this one) hoped and believed that Holder meant what he said. He instituted new training on prosecutors’ duties to provide evidence favorable to the defense (Brady evidence), and publicly, he was saying all the right things. Except one.

The Department of Justice opposed the Fairness in Disclosure of Evidence Act. The bill died. And the Department of Justice continues to hide evidence. We learned that in Holder’s view, only prosecutors can decide what is “material to the defense,” and if they decide it’s not material, they don’t disclose it—even if it is obviously favorable to the defense.  Mr. Holder’s Department is even seeking to change the ethical rules in each state to comport with the Department’s view and make it easier for prosecutors to hide evidence. Mr. Holder’s view of the Brady rule puts the prosecutor in total and sole control of the outcome of the case. It licenses him to lie.

Meanwhile, in the Merrill case back in Texas, while still denying there was any Brady evidence, the prosecutors mailed me a disc of documents they did not realize revealed crucial notes of government agents’ interviews of the person that lead prosecutor Kathryn Ruemmler herself had called the “key” to their case. Not only did these long-hidden notes reveal clear, declaratory statements that directly contradicted everything Ruemmler, Friedrich, Hemann and their hearsay-only witnesses had told the court and jury, but the prosecutors had actually yellow-highlighted the notes as Brady information favorable to the defense—and still hid it.

So where, you might ask, are all of these prosecutors now? Holder fired them immediately, right?

Not exactly. The prosecutors on the team who yellow-highlighted the evidence favorable to the Merrill defendants and still “plainly suppressed” it were honored, promoted, and protected.

Andrew Weissmann became General Counsel of the FBI until this past October, when he quietly left to join NYU Law School.

Kathryn Ruemmler, who signed the Brady letter in the Merrill prosecution, which omitted the crucial yellow-highlighted statements of the person she herself said was the “key” to the prosecution, was promoted to Assistant Attorney General, and then became Obama’s longest serving chief White House Counsel. She recently returned to the prestigious firm of Latham & Watkins.

Her co-lead counsel, Matthew Friedrich, who also personally told the jury facts that were directly refuted by the yellow-highlighted evidence, became the head of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. Mr. Friedrich rushed the indictment of Senator Stevens and micromanaged that corrupted prosecution, which cost the citizens of Alaska their senior Senator, changed the balance of power in the Senate, and facilitated the enactment of Obamacare. Mr. Friedrich quietly left the Department during the transition to Mr. Holder, just before the Stevens’ prosecution blew up completely and well before the Shuelke Report revealed evidence of his nefarious role (which he denied). He’s now a partner at the prestigious international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

 

Andrew Weissmann (right) followed by Matt Friedrich as they arrive at the federal courts building in Houston, Texas for the Arthur Andersen trial, May 2002. (James Nielsen/AFP/Getty Images)

John Hemann remains an Assistant United States Attorney in San Francisco.

Four of the Stevens’ prosecutors are still with the Department. Two who were assessed brief suspensions have their rulings on appeal and are still Assistant U.S. Attorneys. The others the Department cleared of any wrongdoing; one is back in the Public Integrity Section, the other in the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.

And now, despite demands from POGO, repeated rebukes by various federal judges, his own contempt of Congress, IRS abuses and now missing crucial evidence and emails, and widespread acknowledgment of an “epidemic” of prosecutorial misconduct, Attorney General Holder refuses to release so much as the names of the prosecutors who have committed intentional or reckless acts of misconduct.

How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see? And how long will Congress and the public allow it?

Sidney Powell worked in the Department of Justice for 10 years and was lead counsel in more than 500 federal appeals. She served nine US Attorneys from both political parties and is the author of Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice.

 

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HUMAN EVENTS BLOG

FAST AND FURIOUS BOMBSHELL: HAS ERIC HOLDER BEEN CAUGHT LYING TO CONGRESS?

 

By: John Hayward  
10/4/2011 08:58 AM

 

CBS News, which already found evidence that ATF Special Agent in Charge Bill Newell lied to Congress when describing his contact with White House National Security staffer Kevil O’Reilly, kept digging through the documents dumped by the White House last Friday, and found a much bigger story lurking among the emails: what appears to be evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress, in response to a direct question.

New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten monthsbefore that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

(Emphasis mine.)  These documents are very specific about the nature of the gun walking operation, and they do use the name “Operation Fast and Furious,” according to a Fox News report:

In a July 2010 memo, Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder straw buyers in the Operation Fast and Furious case “are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels.”

Also, on Oct.18, 2010, one of Holder’s chief deputies, Lanny Breuer, chief of the department’s Criminal Division, told Holder in a memo that prosecutors were ready to issue indictments in Operation Fast and Furious.

It’s not just Holder on the hook for lying, either.  The latest batch of emails disperse the entire Justice Department smokescreen surrounding the “gun walker” operations, in which American guns were deliberately allowed to “walk” across the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.  Justice Department officials have always tried to paint this as a rogue ATF operation driven off the rails by a couple of incompetent and over-zealous supervisors, but that excuse just became permanently inoperative, as CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson says “the new documents leave no doubt that high-level Justice officials knew guns were being ‘walked’”:

Two Justice Department officials mulled it over in an email exchange Oct. 18, 2010. “It’s a tricky case given the number of guns that have walked but is a significant set of prosecutions,” says Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division. Deputy Chief of the National Gang Unit James Trusty replies “I’m not sure how much grief we get for ‘guns walking.’ It may be more like, “Finally they’re going after people who sent guns down there.”

DOJ spokesmen claim the officials in those emails were “talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General,” which is rather difficult to square with the comment about “the number of guns that have walked.”  There were gun walking operations prior to the Obama Administration, but they were far smaller – Holder’s DOJ increased the number of guns being walked by a factor of ten to fifteen times.  Previous operations also featured the kind of relatively careful surveillance so conspicuously absent in the Holder era, when agents who tried to pursue gun buyers were told to stand down.

As for Holder, he’s tried two different, and equally outrageous, defenses in the hours since the CBS story broke.  In both cases, Holder portrays himself as a dangerous incompetent instead of a liar, which is not exactly an argument for keeping him in the Attorney General’s office.

The first excuse from Holder was offered to CBS News, and involved him claiming he misunderstood the simple and direct questions he was asked by the House Oversight committee.  Courtesy of the Gun Rights Examiner, here is the exact text of the question asked by Rep. Darrell Issa, and the Attorney General’s reply:

ISSA: Mr. Attorney General, we have two Border Patrol agents who are dead, who were killed by guns that were allowed, as far as we can tell, to deliberately walk out of gun shops under the program often called Fast and Furious. This program, as you know — and the President’s been asked about it, you’ve been asked about it – allowed for weapons to be sold to straw purchasers, and ultimately, many of those weapons are today in the hands of drug cartels and other criminals. When did you first know about the program, officially, I believe, called Fast and Furious? To the best of your knowledge, what date?

HOLDER: I’m not sure of the exact date but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.

Is anything about that question and answer even slightly unclear?  Bear in mind that Dick Cheney’s advisor, Scooter Libby, did jail time for giving investigators the wrong date when asked when he first learned the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.  Libby was only off by one month… and we later learned that he wasn’t even the one who disclosed Plame’s identity to the press.  Also, Libby wasn’t lying about an operation that has killed both Mexican and American citizens.

Holder’s other “incompetence defense,” as reported by the Daily Caller:

The Justice Department responded to this new information by saying that Holder receives many updates, memos and briefings daily and doesn’t always read them all — even if official records show he was informed of the intimate details of a case.

Wow.  Just… wow.  Never before in American history has a high official tried to claim so desperately that he’s utterly unqualified for his job, as a defense against perjury charges. Even if you’re inclined to accept the excuse that Holder’s in-box contains a lot of stuff he never gets around to reading, including reports about lunatic operations that could be interpreted as acts of war against Mexico, the new email revelations shred Holder’s claims that Fast and Furious never “reached into the upper levels of the Justice Department,” as related by CNN in September:

During a televised Justice Department news conference, Holder acknowledged the ATF’s gun-running operation designed to track weapons to Mexican drug cartels “was clearly a flawed enforcement effort.”

But Holder rejected the idea investigators will find that either he or his top aides had any knowledge of the operation.

“The notion that this reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that at this point I don’t think is supported by the facts and I think once we examine it and once the facts are revealed we’ll see that’s not the case,” Holder told reporters.

Are we supposed to believe Holder is so inept that he doesn’t even know who prepares the reports he isn’t reading?  One of the memos he claims not to have seen came from Lanny Breuer, who is the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the Justice Department.  Doesn’t he count as “upper level?”

It was time for Eric Holder to leave the Justice Department long ago.  Now it’s time for him to be escorted from the building.

Update: In referring to the punishment leveled at Scooter Libby for lying to congressional investigators, I forgot that while he was sentenced to jail time, the sentence was commuted.  The only person who actually went to jail in the Plame affair was journalist Judith Miller.  I apologize for any confusion caused by this error.

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A Call for Eric Holder’s Resignation & Prosecution

1,203,877 Letters and Emails Sent So Far

 

When is enough, enough? We say the time is now! The Obama Administration has shown itself to have blatant disregard and disrespect for our system of government as well as for the law of the land, the Constitution. Obama and his cronies operate as if the United States is a dictatorship and operate like a Chicago crime syndicate. They do what they want, when they want, with absolutely no regard to the law.

 

Mission Statement for the Department of Justice

To enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.

 

Attorney General Eric Holder makes a mockery of this mission statement every day. Rather than running his office as a servant to the American people with deep respect for the laws that he is supposed to enforce, he runs the Department of Justice like the enforcement wing of a mafia organization with President Obama at the helm. Holder acts as Obama’s personal attorney and hit man, doing whatever is necessary to protect him and ‘the family’, even if it means unlawful acts.

America has seen a number of egregious and unlawful acts by the man who is supposed to serve as the main legal advisor to the United States government. Instead, he uses his office as a weapon to push Obama’s radical, unconstitutional agenda and to punish those who disagree with the president We have witnessed a refusal to prosecute Black Panthers for voter intimidation. We have seen the loss of life, including Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, with the gun running operation Fast and Furious. We have heard Holder state that citizenship to illegals is a ‘civil right’. Those are just to name a few. 

We have recently learned that Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, issued secret subpoenas to spy on members of the Associated Press for over 2 months! In addition to that, he signed the authorization for the DOJ to go after FOX News Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen for simply doing his job. They labeled him as a possible criminal co-conspirator in violation of the Espionage Act and monitored his phone, his parent’s phones, phones at FOX News as well as his personal email. Those are the tactics of the Soviet Union and a clear attack on freedom of the press! 

IS THIS STILL AMERICA?

This most recent illegal act by Eric Holder’s Department of (In)Justice is so incredibly tyrannical and unconstitutional that should be the final straw for his removal from office! 

RNC Chair Reince Preibus was correct when he stated: 

“Freedom of the press is an essential right in a free society. The First Amendment doesn’t request the federal government to respect it; it demands it. Attorney General Eric Holder, in permitting the Justice Department to issue secret subpoenas to spy on Associated Press reporters, has trampled on the First Amendment and failed in his sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. Because Attorney General Holder has so egregiously violated the public trust, the president should ask for his immediate resignation. If President Obama does not, the message will be unmistakable: The President of the United States believes his administration is above the Constitution and does not respect the role of a free press.”

We agree with Preibus. Holder should tender his resignation effective immediately! But, that is not enough. We continue to call for the prosecution of Eric Holder. The very rule of law is at stake and the credibility of every law enforcement officer in the country. If our top law enforcement agency refuses to follow the law, there is no rule of law, and this is no longer America.  

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WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:

Impeach and Imprison Eric Holder.

Eric Holder is a criminal. He should be removed from the political system and jailed.

The Attorney General been called on charges of contempt and has participated immensely in the destruction of our glorious nation.

 

Eric Holder, issued secret subpoenas to spy on members of the Associated Press for over 2 months! In addition to that, he signed the authorization for the DOJ to go after FOX News Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen for simply doing his job. They labeled him as a possible criminal co-conspirator in violation of the Espionage Act and monitored his phone, his parent’s phones, phones at FOX News as well as his personal email.

These are the tactics of the old Soviet Union and a blatantly obvious attack on the freedom of the press!

Is this still America?

 

Created: Jun 20, 2014

Issues: Civil Rights and Liberties, Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement, Government Reform